Michigan View's Gary Wolfram Resurrects 18th Cent. Racial Bigotry in His Vision of Economic “Freedom” (ala Adam Smith)

Response to Gary Wolfram in "The wealth of our nation" in the DetNews/Mackinac Center driven Michigan View on Feb 2, 2012.

"(I)t may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an (sic) European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king."

-- Adam Smith Quote from Chapter I from the "Of the Division of Labor", Vol I of "INQUIRY into the NATURAL CAUSES of the WEALTH OF NATIONS" (1776)

According to Gary Wolfram:

"Smith recognized that people coming together to trade among themselves would result in an increase in living standards for all..."

(break)

"Smith's other published book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is less well known - but it was well read in his time and went through six editions. A powerful work, it lays out his observations of human behavior and an understanding of how and why certain customs lead to greater social harmony. For example, a society in which we can interact with one another peaceably to our own benefit requires a sense of propriety. Smith teaches that traditions are important - and (form) a foundation of conservative thought from Edmund Burke to Russell Kirk.

But 'Wealth of Nations' is his most famous work."

Wolfram:

"'Wealth of Nations' is one of those great books that everyone has heard of but few have read. It was a delight to spend time at Hillsdale with people who had not only read Smith - but had studied him. American(s) would benefit if every Legislator read Smith." (emphasis added)

Wolfram:

"The book was an analysis of why parts of the world were mired in abject poverty while Britain enjoyed 'opulence.' Yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king,' notes Smith."

Prof. Gary uses this quote to make his point and doing so telegraphs a backhanded racist statement: Wolfram projects Adam Smith's reference to British "opulence"(which we all are viewing as Downington Abby in the fading, last days of global British Empire) and the ordinary worker in British society in Adam Smith's times.

Make mention then, as Prof. Gary does, concerning the accumulation of many an "African king." So doing Wolfram sites Smith as he brags a "frugal peasant" in Imperial Britain-with its military homogeny over vast sections of the globe-at that time) has a sizable "accommodation." In Smith's estimation, that pot of material things owned by the 18th century working Brit exceeds the wealth of "many an African King", who using the current words of Prof. Gary, lived in parts of the world "mired in poverty."

Wolfram's assertion: That "African King" (who is in Smith's representation the "absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages") was not as well-off as a British common laborer in Smith's time. 

This sociologically unbalanced comparison was set in a past century when such racially slanted speech was commonly accepted. However braggadocio or prejudiced, the writers in contemporary times of Adam Smith thought nothing of using an "African King" as model-a bold comparison/contrast to the degree of accumulation held by a man of "labour" in Britain-compare and contrasted with an "African King" at the time of Smith's 18th century....
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In the PICTURE above, just behind Gary Wolfram (holding book) is Lawrence W. (Larry) Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Freedom, former Pres (and still Pres. Emeritus) of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Harry C. Veryser, Jr. professor at Walsh College (past at Hillsdale & Northwood), former Judicial Commissioner (Engler), Board Member at the Acton Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.  From an event on October 13, 2009 at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies in a a panel of economics to debate the issue of government intervention during economic recessions.

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The point Prof. Gary attempts to make in his blog, "The Wealth of Our Nation" is a grand argument for his quaint economic theories. The airy prof utilizes Smith's dated, bigoted example to prove his point- mindless of the racist implications implicit in this select quote. The lines he chose to use. This bigotry only aggravates the imbalance and ignorance of Prof. Gary's proofs offered the reader in his essay's conclusion below.

Wolfram's bromide based on bias and bigotry:

"(T)he gap between the richest and poorest in the United States and other market capitalist states is NOT AS LARGE CLASS WARRIORS WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE." (emphasis added)

Wolfram:

"I tell my students that the difference between their life style and that of Bill Gates is not that great. Like Gates, they live in a house with indoor plumbing and air conditioning (80 percent of all poor households in the US have air conditioning) though his may be bigger. Like Gates, they have a car (three-quarters of all Americas' poor have their own car) though his may be nicer. Like Gates, they can fly to California though he may have a private jet. Like Gates, they probably eat what he eats, and so on. Basically, they live a similar life.

"NOW COMPARE THEIR LIFE TO SOMEONE LIVING IN A REFUGEE CAMP IN SOMALIA."

"That is a stark contrast. In this time of Occupy Wall Street rage Smith's observation is worth repeating. Adam Smith told us that we need in order to achieve the wealth for all, including the "INDUSTRIOUS PEASANT."

"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: All the rest being brought about by THE NATURAL COURSE OF THINGS."

"Our federal government has grown far beyond this to the point where it regulates our daily life from how much water our toilet may flush to what kind of car we may drive. The massive health care and financial regulation bills of the Obama administration do not fit Adam Smith's prescription for an opulent society. Perhaps in 2012 we will return to the philosophy that brought us the wealth of our nation." (emphasis added)

Wolfram's Thrust: Why are American Blacks mired in poverty? Just read Wealth of Nations. In fact, he says "American(s) would benefit id every Legislator read Smith".


How instructive to compare Detroit's African-American community's economic status with the status of "Someone living in a refugee camp in Somalia." NO VALID COMPARISON!


Comparison relative to the ACTUAL IMPACT OF POVERTY and UNEMPLOYMENT in urban Detroit must be CONTRASTED with status of 1% LUXURIATING in the wealthy Oakland Co.suburbs; that's the REAL CONTRAST. 

Dissect that Prof Gary!


READER: The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)
More responses and posts on Gary Wolfram on the Gazette.

Original.

Silent Night: From the Forbes 400 Counting House to Yours: Michigan’s One Percenters

Michigan's One Percent: The Mega-Wealthy or Ultra High Net-Worth Michiganders

The Michigan 1% Given Listed by Forbes: Rank, Name, Age, Michigan Residence, Company/Industry

1. #60,   Richard (Rich) DeVos Sr., $5 B, Age 85, Holland, Amway
2. #60,   Frederik Meijer (deceased at 91), $5 B, Grand Rapids, Supermarkets
3. #159, Alfred Taubman, $2.5 B, Age 87, Bloomfield Hills, Real Estate
4. #171, Ronda Stryker, $2.3 B, Age 57, Portage, Medical Technology
5. #212, Michael & Marian Ilitch, $2 B, Bingham Farms, Pizza
6. # 293, Daniel Gilbert, $1.5 B, Age 49, Franklin, Quicken Loans
7. # 293, Manuel Moroun, $1.5 B, Age 84, Grosse Pt Shores, Transportation
8. # 375, William Ford, $1.1 B, Grosse Pt Shores, Ford Motor Co.
9. # 375, Jon Stryker, $1.1 B, Age 53, Kalamazoo, Medical Technology

Sort them out. Ideological and Political Billionaire Bullies or Grand Noblesse Oblige Benefactors/Genuine Contributors to the Greater Good??


Original.

Michissippi Breaks Its Social Contract With the Public

"Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs."

-- E.P. Thompson, in "The Making of the English Working Class"


Original.

The Free Fire Kill Zone: Snyder’s War on Michigan’s Real People

"Kill them all! Let God sort them out!" Kill as many of the programs and benefits and opportunities for the middle and working class, the poor, the mentally ill and the greatly disadvantaged as politically possible.

Select vets of Viet Nam wore black silk windbreakers emblazoned and embroidered with screaming eagles swooping down with sharpened claws out- stretched wide in fierce attack: Kill them all! Let God sort them out!

Teary Eyes & A Stone Cold Heart
What kind of man, nerd or not, snivels and cries on camera about being "bullied" all through elementary and high school, AND EVEN COLLEGE; while AT THE SAME time taking the big stick of the legislative and governmental police powers to devastate and eviscerate programs intended, and formerly legislated in good faith, laws and acts to protect and promote the "general welfare" and defend the "commonweal of Michigan." To do this during a time of deep trial and economic depression in the state is an abomination and a travesty of the legislative and democratic process. It is a monumental rebuke to the rights of the minority in the democratic process.

Rick Snyder Is at Total War with His Own State's People
Snyder is a Business Mercenary devoted to the good and promotion of profit and commercial competition; without bounds of prudence and good sense.

Snyder the NERD is a stick puppet for the aggressive Chamber of Commerce, Aggressive Richard D. McLellan: Super Lawyer & associated Insurance Concerns, the national Heritage Foundation, Charles and David Koch, the Amway Cabal, and corporations with deep and powerful control of major sections of manufacturing and commerce in the state (Dow, Consumers Energy) .

Snyder and his compliant Commercial Raiders are out to Kill -- let God sort out the carnage and the human misery and suffering Snyder and their greed is creating. Michissippi has come. Snyder is on the Kill.

The Snyder/Tea Party Kill Zone-State & National Hits:

• Kill Social Security
• Kill Medicare
• Kill National Health Care
• Kill Public Schools
• Kill Collective Bargaining
• Kill Unions
• Kill Women's Rights
• Kill Fraud Regulations
• Kill Environmental Controls: The EPA
• Kill Local Control 'Right of Self Determination'
• Kill Revenue
• Kill Civility
• Kill Bipartisanship
• Kill Science
• Kill the right to Vote/Decimate Minority Voting Rights
• Kill Compromise and Collaboration
• Kill Religious Tolerance
• Kill Immigration
• Kill the 'Jesus Spirit' and Caring in Public Life
• Kill All New Taxes
• Kill legitimate infrastructure projects
• Kill protection of the Great Lakes from invasive species and deadly pollutants
• Kill Affirmative Action
• Kill No-Fault Auto Insurance
• Kill Workers Comp
• Kill Rights and Privileges of Labor PAC's To Operate On Par With Business/Corporate/Party PAC's
• Kill the 6 Month Recovery Period Before Final Foreclosure
• Kill K-12 Funding by Suspect Conversion to K-16
• Kill Teacher Professionalism Via Destruction of Awarded Tenure & Pummeled Disrespect
• Kill Extended Unemployment In a Time of Ultimate Need
• Kill Welfare's Safety Net Via Arbitrary Cut-Offs
• Kill State Police Protection Via Downgrading to Lower Grade/Politically Run County Mounty Service
• Kill Economic Development
• Kill Manufacturing in Favor of Outsourcing-China and Other Third World Sweatshops and Centers of Child Labor
• Kill Local Public/Neighborhood Schools Via So-Called 'Conversion Schools'
• Kill Minimum Wage
• Kill State and Local Incentives for New Business Development
• Kill High Standards Certification for Educators
• Kill Four Year College Degrees
• Kill Domestic Partner Benefits
• Kill Medical Marijuana
• Kill Confidence in Government
• Kill Statesmanship
• Kill the Legislative Bill Introduction Process-Farm- Out Pro-Corporate Bills out to the Koch Bros. funded American Legislative Exchange Council

Rick "Nerd" Snyder has abused the process of responsible governance and created a killing zone, a dead zone, in Michigan which will haunt and oppress Michiganders for years to come.


Original.

Worldwide Super-Rich Stash: Now $25 Trillion

Wealth X has out a New Report: There are 185,795 Individuals Worldwide Worth at Least $30 Million

Sam Pizzigati from the Institute for Policy Studies in "The Global Super-Rich Stash: Now $25 Trillion" writes:

"For the first time, thanks to Wealth-X, we can compare the barely ultra with the comfortably ultra and those super ultras who can make the comfortables seem pinched.

"Our report maps exactly where the biggest money is located," Wealth-X CEO Mykolas Rambus boasted at a Geneva news conference last week, "and just how much there is."

"The Wealth-X research answers "how many" as well. The firm counts 185,795 individuals worldwide with at least $30 million net worth. These ultra high net-worth individuals - UHNWs (Ultra High Net-Worth) - hold $25 Trillion in combined wealth."

Tax the One Percenters? Yes or No ?

"If America's ultra [wealthy] averaged returns on those (vast assets they already hold) investments not that far above 5 percent over the next ten years, they could pay the wealth tax and still end the decade with higher personal net worths than when the decade began."

So Why Not ask the ultra rich to pay their fair share?


Original.

Occupy Payne: Bloomfield Hills

Response to Henry Payne in "Occupy Michael Moore: His opulent lake estate" in the Michigan View / Detroit News on November 11, 2011.

It might have been a cold choppy day when Hank Payne risked his handy Kodak and mounted the tremulous waves of deep and miles long Torch Lake to capture an image Michael Moore's house - far North in Michigan. Payne (or surrogate) slipped in and out of the water to get one of his gottcha shots; like the one he snapped at Occupy Detroit last Saturday where Hank slipped in and out of the protest crowd to snap a photo. Hank picked the just right- the most useful poster/sign for his purpose, which he could use as a "cartoonish" depiction that would put down the Occupy movement.

So in the spirit of Payne let's take a short look at Hank's neighborhood, he lives nestled amid the Michigan cluster of 99%ers. What are the stats on his local:

From Wiki:

"Bloomfield Hills is a city in Oakland County of the U.S. state of Michigan, 20.2 miles northwest of downtown Detroit. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,869. Bloomfield Hills consistently ranks as one of the top five wealthiest cities in the United States with population between 2,500 to 9,999 - it currently is listed at the number four position and in 1990 it was ranked number two, and has the highest income of any city outside of California or Florida. The median income for a family is over $200,000. In 2000, 49% of residential property in Bloomfield Hills had a value of over $1,000,000."

What say Payne? Does he actually achieve the Bloomfield Hills 49% level with a home over one million dollars?

Occupy Payne? Why not? This is in concept the heart of the issue. Do the Bloomfield Hills folk have compassion and fathom the concerns and passions displayed in the Occupy Movement? Not likely.

Occupy Payne? Those who live in the heart of the 99%ers ought not throw stones or mock those who achieved/have the means such as Michael Moore has.

 MICHAEL MOORE HAS GIVEN VOICE TO THOSE WHO WANT BALANCE AND PROBITY TO WALL STREET-A FINANCIAL OFFICER HIRED TO DEAL WITH PERSONAL INVESTMENTS HAS A LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY TO ACT AS A FIDUCIARY FOR THE CLIENT.

Wiki again:

"A fiduciary duty (from Latin fiduciarius, meaning "(holding) in trust"; from fides, meaning "faith", and fiducia, meaning "trust") is a legal or ethical relationship of confidence or trust between two or more parties. One party, for example a corporate trust company or the trust department of a bank, acts in a fiduciary capacity to one, who for example has funds entrusted to it for investment. IN A FIDUCIARY RELATIONSHIP, ONE PERSON, IN A POSITION OF VULNERABILITY, JUSTIFIABLY VESTS CONFIDENCE, GOOD FAITH, RELIANCE AND TRUST IN ANOTHER WHOSE AID, ADVICE OR PROTECTION IS SOUGHT IN SOME MATTER. IN SUCH A RELATION GOOD CONSCIENCE REQUIRES THE FIDUCIARY TO ACT AT ALL TIMES FOR THE SOLE BENEFIT AND INTEREST OF THE ONE WHO TRUSTS.

A fiduciary is someone who has undertaken to act for and on behalf of another in a particular matter in circumstances which give rise to a relationship of trust and confidence. -Bristol & West Building Society v Mothew [1998] Ch 1 at 18 per Lord Millett

"A fiduciary duty is the highest standard of care at either equity or law."
(Emphasis added)

Moore is and will be a target of savage blowback, it is expected.

Footnote: Payne's cartoonish punditry and simplistic cartoons do not reach the high threshold set by others. Compared to the vastly superior material produced in the recent past, Payne falls short, even with a Princeton education, when compared with those witty and punch-packed renderings of Gary Packingham-an accomplished artist/cartoonist with a sharp pen put to the right issues and done in high style. Packingham is best known for his years of political cartooning for most Michigan newspapers.

Original.

U.S. Federal Government Created the American Middle Class – In spite of What You May Have Been Told by Free Market Advocates

The American Federal Government Invented the Middle Class: TeaPublicans now in power in DC are determined to shoot it down.

For the American Dream - directly related to the rise of the Middle Class - to work, people have to believe that it is "possible" for them to reach a higher standard of living. If they don't believe the possibility or opportunity is there to rise in society, then the Dream is dead.

Occupy Wall Street is making all of us face serious questions about the future of the Middle Class and survival of "full faith and confidence" so necessary to the value of our monetary script and a thriving marketplace.

A full chance for individuals to work toward a higher level of wealth and successful achievement has been a perennial draw for immigrants striving to come to America.

"America has been peopled by Europeans primarily because they expected in that country to make more money more easily," Herbert Croly wrote.

American Economic Paradise

"It's no accident that the United States has always been an economic paradise for the middle class -- that class was invented and reinvented by the government. Now the government needs to reinvent it again -- before it's too late."

This a part of a commentary by Michael Lind, Whitehead Senior Fellow, in the Atlantic Monthly in "Are We Still a Middle-Class Nation?"

The Economy of America Has Taken Distinct Changes in its Unfolding Stages: Agricultural, Industrial, and Service

Back to Michael Lind:

"To most of us, the transition from farmer to industrial worker to service worker -- sometimes within three generations of one family -- appears in retrospect to have been inevitable, like some geological process. Indeed, MANY CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERTARIANS SEEM TO BELIEVE THAT A MASS MIDDLE CLASS IS AN INEVITABLE BY-PRODUCT OF CAPITALISM. The truth is that each of AMERICA'S SUCCESSIVE MIDDLE CLASSES HAS BEEN ARTIFICIALLY CREATED BY GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED SOCIAL ENGINEERING -- a fact that is profoundly important for us to admit as we think about the future of middle-class America."

 The favorite mantra of so many advocates of individual freedom, the myth of the stand alone individual, and the anti-government and anti-tax rebels is based on a false premise: The Middle Class is the distinctive work of individuals who work hard, take risks, and are rugged entrepreneurs; best divorced from government intervention or help.

Lind lines it out historically:

"From 1800 to 1848 the U.S. government acquired more than two million square miles of territory, much of it arable, by purchase or negotiation (the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803; Florida from Spain in 1819; Oregon from Britain in 1846), by annexation (Texas, 1845), or by conquest (the Mexican Cession in 1848). Populists sought to ensure that this land went to small farmers rather than large landowners or speculators. THE DANGER OF EUROPEAN-STYLE FEUDALISM IN THE UNITED STATES WAS NEUTRALIZED BY THE LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785, WHICH GUARANTEED THAT THE FEDERAL DOMAIN WOULD BE BROKEN UP INTO "FEE SIMPLE" PROPERTIES, with no complex web of multiple ownership. And the Homestead Act of 1862 provided 160 acres of free public land to settlers who would live on it and improve it for at least five years. Meanwhile, the federal government subsidized continent-crossing railroads, and the Army Corps of Engineers built much of the country's rural infrastructure. This was social engineering on a colossal scale."

"The story was similar for the second American middle class, made up of prosperous urban industrial workers. FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO HERBERT HOOVER, AMERICAN POLITICS WAS DOMINATED BY A BARGAIN BETWEEN CAPITALISTS AND WORKERS; HIGH TARIFFS ON IMPORTS SERVED THE INTERESTS OF BOTH, BY PROTECTING GOODS FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION."

"In addition, the dominant industrial labor force successfully lobbied the government to protect it from competition with other groups. In the late nineteenth century Congress cut off "Oriental" immigration, and after World War I -- with the support of organized labor -- it cut large-scale European immigration. Before World War I informal discrimination prevented southern black Americans from moving to the Northeast and the Midwest to compete for industrial jobs. Finally, child-labor laws removed children from the work force, and "family wage" or "breadwinner" systems -- which paid married fathers more than unmarried, childless men -- encouraged married women to become homemakers. TODAY NOSTALGIC CONSERVATIVES ATTRIBUTE THE PROSPERITY OF THE 1920S TO FREE ENTERPRISE. IN REALITY THE MARKET WAS RIGGED."

To take a deeper look at the basis of the American middle class the writer Lind adds this explanation of the service sector's Middle Class's underlying mechanisms:

"Whereas the second American middle class was founded on high wages for workers in the industrial sector, the third American middle class was founded on the supplementation of wage income by government benefits that collectively constituted a "social wage."

"The social wage included not only private-sector benefits encouraged by the tax code, such as employer-provided health insurance, but also subsidies such as the home-mortgage-interest deduction and government entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare (which freed many middle-class families from the bankrupting burden of caring for elderly parents), the GI Bill for higher education, and student loans.

"As the Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker has pointed out, when the hidden welfare state is counted along with the visible welfare state, the United States has a system of social provision as generous as those in Western Europe -- though in this country much of that system extends only to the middle class and the professional elite.

"The social-wage system had many flaws -- for example, it failed to provide health insurance for tens of millions of Americans. Nevertheless, the third American middle class, the product of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, was larger and more inclusive than the earlier two. From the 1930s to the 1970s income inequality in America shrank dramatically, producing what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have called the Great Compression."
(emphasis added)

Since the 1980's the Service Era Middle Class has been undergoing drastic cuts and a ballooning gap between the now famous 1%'ers and the 99%'ers (who control a vastly unequal portion of the nation's wealth) highlights the 1%'ers who have seen their financial status go from static to negative, from employment to unemployment, from solid home equity to undermined "under water" equity-based on a tsunami of foreclosures.

The vast part of this condition rests squarely on the failed policies of Republicans under George W. Bush and a runaway economic epic including fraud, deception, and theft by Wall Streeters who saw themselves as the "SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE ROOM." The 2008 market value plunge tallies at a staggering multi-trillion dollar loss, nearly equal to the accumulative income of the nation for one entire year!

The fact that many corporations, national and multinational, have billions in assets which are set outside the economy and banks have used only a small fraction of their government provided billions legislated to help homeowners sits idle, and big banks are severely restricting consumer credit, tells us that Occupy Wall Street is directly on target with its protesting.

We want our money back. We want felony convictions. We want a clear path to recovery.

Americans want the "do nothing," "NO" to everything, TeaPublicans out of the way of the American Dream's recovery and reinvention. Let the government continue to sponsor and provide for our Middle Class-the key to the American experience.

Original.

Exclusion versus Egalitarianism: Big Money, Corporations, and an 'arcane' system of 'citizen' legislatures.

Is there room left for 'Mr. Smith' who goes to Lansing?

"Suppose that there is someone out there with the soul of Abraham Lincoln reincarnated, but as poor as Lincoln was at the outset of his career. Suppose some wealthy patron saw his own convictions better advanced by this younger man. Something very like this launched the careers of Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. Surely, we do not want to exclude the very rich from presidential politics, but neither do we want them to constitute a unique political class." 

-- Conservative Harry V. Jaffa in Why Special Interests (And the Constitution) Are Good For You

Jaffa goes on to line out the class warfare such as is now infecting Michigan politics:

"What about those infamous 'special interests'?

"Do not those who invest in candidates and parties expect a return on their investments? (We know Betsy Prince DeVos does. She bluntly told us so).

"Do not lobbyists spend untold millions shaping the laws in their own private interests? (These questions are perfectly appropriate).

"What is amazing is that today no one seems aware that they were the subject of the most profound consideration by those who framed, and those who ratified, the Constitution. The Constitution is indeed, in large part an answer to these questions, an answer of which our present politicians seem largely ignorant."

"In the famous 10th Federalist, James Madison framed the problem of dealing with 'FACTIONS,' a word which was a virtual synonym for what we call 'SPECIAL INTERESTS."
 {Parenthesized notes added}

This well-know conservative scholar goes on to point out that "factions" are a natural result of liberty and equality-in light of the constitution. Professor Harry Jaffa explains:

"According to James Madison, however, faction is an inevitable by product of liberty, and to try to cure the evils of faction by abolishing liberty would be a 'remedy' 'worse than the disease'

"Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, than it "would be to wish the annihilation of air.' 'The latent causes of faction,' writes Madison, 'are sown in the nature of man.'"

"But the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a monied interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests form the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government."

Jaffa would be loud proud of Michigan. Here we have honed the "spirit of party and faction" to a blazing, tempered, razor's edge.

The beguiled TeaPublicans have sought to give themselves and their very well-heeled and influential elites, both in-state (and even more pointedly, outstate), great advantage by attempting to take down any opposing organization via crude legislation and unbending obstructionism. Unions and other citizen groups are a distinct and dangerous impediment to this KOCH BROTHERS kind of corporatist free reign, intent upon shaping all aspects of government to serve and enrich themselves and their first love, business.

The Faux Populist Tea Party: Koch Industry/Corporate Sockpuppets
Crying "freedom, freedom, freedom" the Corporatocracy, pushing its secretly developed and BIG money-backed A.L.E.C/ prepackaged legislation (via the Koch Brothers/Karl Rove's militant hayseed foot soldiers) has co-opted many citizens for corporate benefiting purposes . "

Replete with sharp pitch forks-loud disruptive voices and vicious signs this raw element is on a jag. Honest compromise and/or cooperation are anathema in this rowdy crowd.

The Teapartisans have hijacked the Michigan GOP and the state legislature. TP'ers have put Michigan in a choke hold which is detrimental to the very survivability of a middle class and the state's workers. 

LAZY-BRAINLESS LAWMAKING
We now have a NO-BRAIN SUPER LEGISLATIVE MAJORITY which simply funnels corporate-designed, corporate-benefiting legislation right from the CEO's into law. No need for lobbyists, the A.L.E.C. members are the LOBBYISTS facilitating directly the introduction (some cases feature word-by-word copy from an A.L.EC. prepared "Model") and fast-track passage of legislation produced by and designed to directly benefit a long list of SUPER SPECIAL CORPORATE dominate members of the AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL via the A.L.E.C. direct pipeline from the board room to the citizens' living room and pocketbook.

Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson revealed how he moved A.L.E.C. models he got at A.L.E.C. conclaves as "models" directly into Wisconsin law:

"I always found new ideas and then I'd take them back to Wisconsin, disguise them a little bit, and declare that it's mine."

Likewise Koch Bros and A.L.E.C "models" are CONTINUOUSLY being inserted into Michigan Law by willing members. No straightforward place is left for Mr. Smith who goes to Lansing!


More on ALEC in Michigan can be found here and here.

Original Post.